The Curtain Has Been Lifted
by LadyKryptonite
Summary: They are her ghosts of the past, whispers dragging themselves through her mind.


The world is a funny place. Its contradictions are endless, and, over time, I have come to believe that there is no black and white, that there truly were, only shades of grey. There is no right and wrong, no light and dark. The earth and the stars, heaven and hell, none of it is true, all that exists is a sort of limbo. A great joke made up by some man who couldn't face what he had done and told himself that he did what was right, because the only other option was to be wrong and that was unacceptable. And he believed his lie.

"Are you there, love?"

He was a beautiful child, his mind so filled with pain, so filled with happiness. Shades of grey. That child is gone now, never to return, because what use does a god have for a mortal boy? Subsequently, a god cannot spare his time for a mortal girl, so she was forced to grow wings and fly- only the altitude suffocated her.

"Nagato, why do people love?"

I know I loved him. Some may argue that it was the lust for power, some sort of mental disease, perhaps illusions of divine power that drove me to follow him. Anyone care to bet on a extreme case of megalomania? We will go down in history not as equals, not as a man and woman with a tragic love story never able to reach their happy ending, severely lacking in breath taking kisses and candlelit dinners. I wonder if the children I once knew would have wanted that.

"Why do they put themselves at risk, when they could lose?"

We will be remembered as the villains, the two creators of destruction. Another contradiction. The history books will recite us as mad and bloodthirsty, and our names will be spoken with spite and horror. Our story will have no happy ending, consisting only of grotesque battlefields and countless lives lost. It should make me sad, but I can't seem to muster up the correct emotion for it. I honestly couldn't care less, and that's what bothers me when I really think about it.

"They may pledge to become strong for it, so perhaps they will never have to lose,"

They are all wrong. I never believed in Pein, I was no worshipper of a wretched god. I was a woman who never lost her faith in her lover, the man. Underneath my duties as his angel, I dusted our memories of days lived lifetimes ago; it was only after he was gone, his sins left for the world to remember that I realized that perhaps that man never even existed. It's funny, how even though he died, his name will never be forgotten, his actions leaving scars on the earth that would always serve as a devastating reminder that a malevolent god once walked this desolate earth. Maybe, in the end, that was all he wanted.

"But the risk is there, no power can stop fate"

Even if he didn't exist, even if he only was just something I imagined, I loved him. So much, that at times I feel like killing myself, hating him for making me love a ghost of my childhood, a boy that never should have been. It was morbid, vile, and so incredibly suffocating that I can't imagine even living without it. Peeled bare of my love for him, I would be nothing, how pathetic was that?

"Perfection is a myth, an ideal beyond the lines of rationality"

I have not been to Rain since the day he died. It is silly, to refuse to return to the only place I am loved, revered as an angel even. Why shouldn't I wish to be with those who thought me a good person? Just like me, they fell in love with a lie; the angel was only another mask, beautiful and so achingly fake. What would it do to me when they saw my true face, ugly scars bared and beautiful facade gone? When they recoil in disgust from my betrayal, feel ashamed for ever loving me?

"So why would one let themselves fall into such a deadly trap?"

I am no angel, no divine power flows through my veins with some purpose that the heavens have sent me to complete. These lands that I roam now are godless- not for long though, because that is how we started. Until then, heavens throne will remain empty. Nobody prays here, nobody bows in reverence the great, holy Konan.

"When the idea, the fear of loss is so much more powerful than even their lover?"

If they do, it is only because fear tells them that in my madness I will smite them should they not. That their lives rest simply on my whim, as if I were some insane killer who will surely snap at any given moment, bathing in their blood with a smile. Merciless.

"It is a foolish thing, to be afraid of something you can prevent"

They might even be right. In every single definition of the word, I am mad. Crazy, disturbed, mentally-ill, whatever you choose to call it, they all mean the same thing. I hear voices sometimes, and I don't try to stop listening. Pein never speaks to me. People I have killed, long ago, one slice at a time, slowly, painfully, never dirtying my hands with their tainted blood, punishing them until them begged for death. Sometimes, I vision my death, slow and painful, dying the way I killed. I hear the voice of soft caring brother, spoken lifetimes ago when the world was small, heard through the ears of a child. They all speak to me and I talk back.

"And even so, the fear of losing them may be a greater goad for perfection than losing them itself"

I have ceased trying to straighten my twisted mind. Such an attempt would only lead to more best forgotten memories, more rose coloured illusions of the man I thought, I truly goddamn honestly thought I loved. I did, still do in fact. And if loving a dead man that maybe never even existed isn't crazy then I don't know what is.

"So why do I love you?"

It's hard, talking to your very own personal ghosts. I see him in my mind, listening to me with rapt attention like he used too, making my heart accelerate at the thought of such a man, not a god, giving me his full attention. It's hard because my heart doesn't speed up anymore, doesn't give me that rush, that intoxication. Maybe it's because I know the man I loved wasn't him, maybe it's because I know that even if I had known at the time that man was gone that it wouldn't have caused my heart to slow. The intoxication still would have been there, even if I saw the reality of our relationship.

"Why can't I stop?"

He never answers. Only my voice calls back, echoing off the walls, mocking me. _He's gone, he never existed. _Why doesn't he answer? If it was the man in my head all along that was my perfection, my irrationality, then why wouldn't he answer now? Am I so cruel that I even deprive myself of a love I created?

"Why won't you save me?"

He had loved me, in his own way. Not the real me, that I am sure. Just as I had loved the man he once, maybe never was, he had loved the angel that had never flown. The ones whose wings had been cut and her soul was bound to the earth forever, divinity stripped from her, leaving her naked and unable to face the truth of her own mortality. He loved the perfection that was my illusion.

"Why did you love a lie?"

He never replies, and I will never know the answers to any of my questions.

I'll try again tomorrow

* * *

><p>This is the product of my imagination. I am in fact a very happy person, and am always surprised when my mind manages to conquer up some strangley dark pieces like this. All inner-angsty teenagerism aside, I hope you enjoyed. Any grammatical errors are mine.<p>

-Lady Kryptonite


End file.
